Lance Armstrong: key quotes from Oprah interview

The key questions and answers from Lance Armstrong's confession to Oprah
Winfrey.

5:05AM GMT 18 Jan 2013

Why admit it now? I don't know that I have a great answer. I will start my answer by saying that this is too late. It's too late for probably most people, and that's my fault. I viewed this situation as one big lie that I repeated a lot of times, and as you said, it wasn't as if I just said no and I moved off it

Could the Tour de France be won without doping? Not in that generation, and I'm not here to talk about others in that generation. It's been well-documented. I didn't invent the culture, but I didn't try to stop the culture, and that's my mistake, and that's what I have to be sorry for, and that's what something and the sport is now paying the price because of that.

How sophisticated was the doping programme? It definitely was professional, and it was definitely smart, if you can call it that, but it was very conservative, very risk-averse, very aware of what mattered.

How extensive was the culture of doping? There will be people that say, 'OK, there are 200 guys on the tour, I can tell you five guys that didn't, and those are the five heroes', and they're right.

The drugs My cocktail, so to speak, was EPO -- but not a lot -- transfusions and testosterone. Which, in a weird way, I almost justified because of my history, obviously, with having testicular cancer and losing, I thought, surely, I'm running low.

The bullying I was a bully in the sense that I tried to control the narrative, and if I didn't like what somebody said, and for whatever reasons in my own head whether I viewed that as somebody being disloyal or a friend turning on you or whatever, I tried to control that.

How could you do it?

I think this just ruthless desire to win. Win at all costs, truly. Serves me well on the bike, served me well during the disease, but the level that it went to, for whatever reason, is a flaw. Then that defiance, that attitude, that arrogance, you cannot deny it.

On Emma O'Reilly, the team masseuse he denounced as a prostitute after she revealed his doping

Hey, she's one of these people that I have to apologise to. She's one of these people that got run over, got bullied.

The future

I'll spend the rest of my life trying to earn back trust and apologize to people for the rest of my life